Hi
Yes the main problem with this band( k/Ka) is it's very prone to rain fade, very little water in the signal path will attenuate the signal much more than Ku.
Infact this band was really only thought of as Data carriers, fairly small up links, with massive downlink antennas,
(Hubs) which pick up the low level signals for you.
This section of the Ka BAND Astra 19 east satellite has it's transponders, both up and down zoned, to get coverage of Europe, there are 2 sections of one transponder, for UK giving about 100Mhz space.
So SNG was never really intended for this operation, using DVB S2, hence its pushing it a lot, but never the less does work, most of the time, with SIS Live having remotly full control over up link power, & frequency etc. of the ITV sng trucks.
18 325 Ghz downlink was at one time part of scrambled Playboy TV feed.
Also look out for the lesser used transponder sections like 18.573Ghz, I think mainly used by ITN.
Just to say as a guide to attenuation, the 18.566/ plus Media city Comms feed carrier, should peak out at +14dBm, The average prime focus feed dish of 1.8metre needs at least at +9 dBm carrier for it's sat receiver to be above the tuner thresshold(-55dBm) with the 2.4 meter parabolic dish used by most regions to downlink carrier of +8dBm will work.
They are of course helped by their sat receivers which have IF bandwidth of about 3/4 mHz, with either little range AFC or none, unlike most of our receivers AFC and IF bandwidth, they rely on a very stable L.O of the LNB.
